The Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL] was introduced in the House of Lords by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), on 18 October 2017. It is scheduled to have its second reading in the House of Lords on 1 November 2017.

The Government has stated that the Bill is necessary to enable the UK to implement sanctions—both those that the UK is obliged to implement as a member of the UN, and those that the UK might choose to implement for its own foreign policy purposes—after Brexit, as neither existing domestic legislation, nor EU legislation converted into domestic legislation by the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill would provide a sufficient legal basis.

The Bill would create powers for the Government to make regulations to impose sanctions to comply with UN and other international obligations; to prevent terrorism; for national security or international peace and security; or to further a foreign policy objective. The Bill would allow financial, immigration, trade, aircraft and shipping sanctions to be imposed, and would contain powers to allow additional types of sanctions to be added to this list in future. Sanctions could also be targeted at particular individuals or entities (‘designated persons’) or specified ships. The Bill would allow for regulations to create exceptions and licences to allow activities to take place that would otherwise be prohibited or restricted by sanctions. It would also provide for there to be ministerial and judicial review processes to allow individuals and organisations to challenge sanctions imposed on them. It would allow regulations to be made to update existing provisions on anti-money laundering and terrorist financing, particularly the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, to be updated after the UK’s exit from the EU.